Welcome Ange: To Dare is to Didgeridoo

Muttley · 11 Dec 2024

braineclipse said:
I agree with your point, even though as monkeybarry points out it's not a contradiction to his point.

Though I only agree if that DM is also really good on the ball, press resistance, awareness, tempo setting, passing.

And to be transformational I don't think that player would have to be the best DM in the world. But probably would have to be really good.

The similarities between Ange and Pep in playing style are there though obviously not the same. But Pep missing Rodri. Pep having Busquets, Xavi, Lahm, Alonso in there in previous teams. Rodri now.

A lot of good things can be said about Bissouma (no, really). But as a deep press resistant playmaker it's not just that he's not world class like most of those have been. He's just not very good at it.

Should we perhaps acknowledge that most of the great defensive midfield shields normally had a partner in crime. Makelele was heralded as one of the best, yet had the amazing Lampard working harder than anyone on that pitch. Lamps made it easy for Makelele to sit in Jose's system, even though Ballack definitely didn't. Lamps made Ballack work as well. I remember Lampard making a lung bursting run for England to get in the box after Gerrard had made a trademark run down the right channel. England lost the ball and Gerrard did his usual standing there with his hands on his hips with the crowd applauding him for a great effort. Lampard in the mean time had to follow his forward sprint by an even harder defensive sprint to get back again. Supporters notice these things. TV watchers don't always see them.

In my mind, what is happening at Spurs is that there are no centre midfield partnerships forming. There is no double pivot operating in tandem in an Ange system with one pressing, one holding. There's just a bunch of free spirits doing their own thing in midfield, supposedly supplemented by 2 full-backs who are supposed to take up midfield positions.

If I was ranked the best number 6 in the world, I'm not sure I'd want to play for Ange. I'd eventually end up outside the top 10 and probably in the treatment room more than I care for.

Raziel · 11 Dec 2024

Muttley said:
There's 2 or 3 areas I would identify.

The first is the sheer lateness of the deals each summer. I can remember a frustrated Poch talking about it. We all knew that Levy was pratting about rather than closing business and getting us off to fast starts each season. Levy piled pressure on his manager due to the lateness of the deals. His manager's pre-season's were hugely disrupted by this.

The second is whatever happened between Levy and Mitchell. Poch would know exactly what happened and was probably caught the middle of it. I'm guessing Poch saw the flaws in Levy running football ops, and perhaps the promotion of Hitchen was never blessed by Poch. Obviously, Poch and Micthell both moved from Saints and it felt like hiring Mitchell was Poch's request on Levy.

The third area is the subtle one. I'm not sure Poch wanted the same sort of signings that you describe above after the heights of 2016/17. I remember names like De Ligt, De Jong, Dybala, Fernandez etc. It's the cashflow model that I talk about. Levy was taking the CL monies and leaving Poch with zero net spending, and then posting world record profits. I mean, what manager would be happy after the chairman told the world that the stadium build and football ops were mutually exclusive and that the plan was to get CL when the stadium opened. Then Levy had the audacity to tell THST that Poch was happy with his squad and didn't want to sign anybody.

I think we have to remember that the weekly spokesperson for any football club is the 1st team manager. Poch did amazingly well talking proprietorially about our football club and defending his head of football operations. Doesn't mean he was aligned with him though.

That bit is simply not true, there are financial statements that disagree. Spurs always puts the profits back into the club, it's been 23 years, there is no hording or dividend withdrawals

Depending on what time period you are referring to, the money may have went to the stadium build.

Muttley · 11 Dec 2024

Raziel said:
That bit is simply not true, there are financial statements that disagree. Spurs always puts the profits back into the club, it's been 23 years, there is no hording or dividend withdrawals

Depending on what time period you are referring to, the money may have went to the stadium build.

It's not about hoarding or dividend withdrawals. It's way more subtle than that. It's about phasing and making key decisions.

We had a team worth over half a billion and we let it devalue massively. Probably 80% of its value devalued by the time players left. We had no Coutinho deals where we took top dollar profit in a year where we could absorb it, whilst amortising a new debt over multi-year like they did. We also absorbed the Wembley costs into the football operations budget. That contradicts Levy's statement off the bat, especially the extra year that was down to stadium delays. We also had 2 years of big profits, meaning we paid something like £40m of our transfer budget to HMRC. On a different phasing of cashflow, that was totally avoidable.

What's interesting is that without the early CL revenues, Poch would have in effect stripped himself of some of his best players to get to the same football operations P&L number. Nobody ever talks about that perspective. Same as the only reason he had any net transfer budget until 2019 was because of academy sales like Townsend and Mason. That was the only net transfer budget he was given.

By the way, I'm hoping this is where we don't have this 2-in-a-box model anymore with Levy being one of them. I hope when the time comes and it's clear that a Romero or Sarr won't sign a new deal, Munn steps in and mandates their sale when they have high value just like we did with Walker in 2017. Lange then brings in a suitable replacement and Ange is happy, and understands. It's the only way for a club like ours. We should have done that with Eriksen and Toby.

I have a feeling the lessons from the past have been learnt well though. It was a sub-optimal period of running our club.

Raziel · 11 Dec 2024

Muttley said:
It's not about hoarding or dividend withdrawals. It's way more subtle than that. It's about phasing and making key decisions.

We had a team worth over half a billion and we let it devalue massively. Probably 80% of its value devalued by the time players left. We had no Coutinho deals where we took top dollar profit in a year where we could absorb it, whilst amortising a new debt over multi-year like they did. We also absorbed the Wembley costs into the football operations budget. That contradicts Levy's statement off the bat, especially the extra year that was down to stadium delays. We also had 2 years of big profits, meaning we paid something like £40m of our transfer budget to HMRC. On a different phasing of cashflow, that was totally avoidable.

What's interesting is that without the early CL revenues, Poch would have in effect stripped himself of some of his best players to get to the same football operations P&L number. Nobody ever talks about that perspective. Same as the only reason he had any net transfer budget until 2019 was because of academy sales like Townsend and Mason. That was the only net transfer budget he was given.

By the way, I'm hoping this is where we don't have this 2-in-a-box model anymore with Levy being one of them. I hope when the time comes and it's clear that a Romero or Sarr won't sign a new deal, Munn steps in and mandates their sale when they have high value just like we did with Walker in 2017. Lange then brings in a suitable replacement and Ange is happy, and understands. It's the only way for a club like ours. We should have done that with Eriksen and Toby.

I have a feeling the lessons from the past have been learnt well though. It was a sub-optimal period of running our club.

I agree, I'm just careful with the wording because if we want to comment/fix what's wrong with our club, it needs to be accurate

- The narrative the the club does not spend, does not invest and the owners are "pocketing" profits is very widely spread.
- The point of the stadium was to get us out of some of those financial trade offs you walked through there (and we could talk about if/how the club could have taken on a little more risk for reward at specific times.
- I don't see Poch as the messiah that some do, but I have a lot of sympathy on how timing impacted his peak side, the money crunch and playing at Wembley came at exactly the wrong time, and perhaps most impactful time on our progress ..

Like I've said, club is spending more, seems smarter, still not perfect. Future actions (January is a big decision point for us) not words will tell.

thfcsteff · 11 Dec 2024

...

Muttley said:
It's not about hoarding or dividend withdrawals. It's way more subtle than that. It's about phasing and making key decisions.

We had a team worth over half a billion and we let it devalue massively. Probably 80% of its value devalued by the time players left. We had no Coutinho deals where we took top dollar profit in a year where we could absorb it, whilst amortising a new debt over multi-year like they did. We also absorbed the Wembley costs into the football operations budget. That contradicts Levy's statement off the bat, especially the extra year that was down to stadium delays. We also had 2 years of big profits, meaning we paid something like £40m of our transfer budget to HMRC. On a different phasing of cashflow, that was totally avoidable.

What's interesting is that without the early CL revenues, Poch would have in effect stripped himself of some of his best players to get to the same football operations P&L number. Nobody ever talks about that perspective. Same as the only reason he had any net transfer budget until 2019 was because of academy sales like Townsend and Mason. That was the only net transfer budget he was given.

By the way, I'm hoping this is where we don't have this 2-in-a-box model anymore with Levy being one of them. I hope when the time comes and it's clear that a Romero or Sarr won't sign a new deal, Munn steps in and mandates their sale when they have high value just like we did with Walker in 2017. Lange then brings in a suitable replacement and Ange is happy, and understands. It's the only way for a club like ours. We should have done that with Eriksen and Toby.

I have a feeling the lessons from the past have been learnt well though. It was a sub-optimal period of running our club.

I mean, all of it is a yes, but the bold-faced is heart of the matter! I remember it so clearly...

Bedfordspurs · 11 Dec 2024

Muttley said:
It's not about hoarding or dividend withdrawals. It's way more subtle than that. It's about phasing and making key decisions.

We had a team worth over half a billion and we let it devalue massively. Probably 80% of its value devalued by the time players left. We had no Coutinho deals where we took top dollar profit in a year where we could absorb it, whilst amortising a new debt over multi-year like they did. We also absorbed the Wembley costs into the football operations budget. That contradicts Levy's statement off the bat, especially the extra year that was down to stadium delays. We also had 2 years of big profits, meaning we paid something like £40m of our transfer budget to HMRC. On a different phasing of cashflow, that was totally avoidable.

What's interesting is that without the early CL revenues, Poch would have in effect stripped himself of some of his best players to get to the same football operations P&L number. Nobody ever talks about that perspective. Same as the only reason he had any net transfer budget until 2019 was because of academy sales like Townsend and Mason. That was the only net transfer budget he was given.

By the way, I'm hoping this is where we don't have this 2-in-a-box model anymore with Levy being one of them. I hope when the time comes and it's clear that a Romero or Sarr won't sign a new deal, Munn steps in and mandates their sale when they have high value just like we did with Walker in 2017. Lange then brings in a suitable replacement and Ange is happy, and understands. It's the only way for a club like ours. We should have done that with Eriksen and Toby.

I have a feeling the lessons from the past have been learnt well though. It was a sub-optimal period of running our club.

That £40m may have saved us £100m in interest if it meant better loans
But no club should make a profit
Luckily we now lose money

thfcsteff · 11 Dec 2024

Raziel said:
Bit revisionist/hopeful view

- Poch was a good coach for us, but his head was gone, in the end he became his mentor, he burned himself and some of his players out physically/emotionally. GLC, Ndombele were buys hoping he could fix his head, he couldn't. Similar to Conte, did he do good in first season? yes, but then he lost his head (in his case, personal issues)
- I think Poch would have struggled to work with a recruitment structure, his famous comments about coach vs. manager, his refusal of players at points and the fact the when the club did buy his players (too late), it was the worse window ever.

The big mistake the club made wasn't firing Poch, it was not replacing him with a manager that could manage the rebuild (although we could talk about the Nuno attempt), so effectively we just punted the problem 3 years.

Ange +squad still seem onboard/aligned, again, outside of a complete disaster, he's got to have until end of season. And he needs to be backed in January (a Deki/Bentancur window would be good)

And you talk about 'revisionist' my friend hahahaha.
Can I ask, do you remember Poch saying it would take several months before Ndombele found his flow, that he was a player who would not hit his full potential for a year? Do you remember that we actually only got GLC on deadline day, and it was on an inital loan? Oh we got close to Dybala but couldn't sort out the 'image rights' (FFS). And then, three months later, we sacked the manager? Do you genuoinely believe that three months would be enough for these panacea signings to 'fix his head'? Sorry, that is ALL on Levy. HE decided to try and make up with Poch in the summer after that tense silence, HE decided that he would not want the ire of some of the fan base roaring at him for sacking a CL finalist, and it is pretty clear that HE made subsequent decisions which were ludicrous given his eventual actions.

(as ever in the spirit of debate

...I still find this an incredibly devisive topic LOL)

glasgowspur · 11 Dec 2024

Muttley said:
It's not about hoarding or dividend withdrawals. It's way more subtle than that. It's about phasing and making key decisions.

We had a team worth over half a billion and we let it devalue massively. Probably 80% of its value devalued by the time players left. We had no Coutinho deals where we took top dollar profit in a year where we could absorb it, whilst amortising a new debt over multi-year like they did. We also absorbed the Wembley costs into the football operations budget. That contradicts Levy's statement off the bat, especially the extra year that was down to stadium delays. We also had 2 years of big profits, meaning we paid something like £40m of our transfer budget to HMRC. On a different phasing of cashflow, that was totally avoidable.

What's interesting is that without the early CL revenues, Poch would have in effect stripped himself of some of his best players to get to the same football operations P&L number. Nobody ever talks about that perspective. Same as the only reason he had any net transfer budget until 2019 was because of academy sales like Townsend and Mason. That was the only net transfer budget he was given.

By the way, I'm hoping this is where we don't have this 2-in-a-box model anymore with Levy being one of them. I hope when the time comes and it's clear that a Romero or Sarr won't sign a new deal, Munn steps in and mandates their sale when they have high value just like we did with Walker in 2017. Lange then brings in a suitable replacement and Ange is happy, and understands. It's the only way for a club like ours. We should have done that with Eriksen and Toby.

I have a feeling the lessons from the past have been learnt well though. It was a sub-optimal period of running our club.

We never had a team worth half a billion.
Maybe we valued them at that but nobody else did.
Only walker and Harry went for considerable fees, nobody came in for any of the rest of them, and certainly not for fees that were going to get the squad to half a billion £s.
City, utd and real Madrid have all paid the fees we wanted for our players, so we would sell, but nobody wanted them.

Bishop · 11 Dec 2024

glasgowspur said:
We never had a team worth half a billion.
Maybe we valued them at that but nobody else did.
Only walker and Harry went for considerable fees, nobody came in for any of the rest of them, and certainly not for fees that were going to get the squad to half a billion £s.
City, utd and real Madrid have all paid the fees we wanted for our players, so we would sell, but nobody wanted them.

It was a mixture, Levy was notoriously known for having high fees in mind for even squad players. We held on to those players for too long and it got stale. Sissoko should have been out of the door 1, maybe maximum 2 seasons after we got him and someone else in to try the role. We needed to buy and sell more proactively and precisely, a bit of wheeling dealing if you like.

It's the approach we are now reportedly taking and I'm hopeful, we follow it through and pounce when the moment arrises again. That parr, i can't say is going to happen, but I guess we will see.

Muttley · 11 Dec 2024

Bedfordspurs said:
That £40m may have saved us £100m in interest if it meant better loans
But no club should make a profit
Luckily we now lose money

Even then, that is a huge assumption. A financial institution serving a loan to a club like THFC is looking at every variable under the sun. It could be argued that whether we made £120m profit or a £30m loss in that year may not have made one iota of difference to the interest rate they offered us.

All I'm saying above is that our multi-year phasing went awry in the model. I think that is one of the reasons why Poch cut a frustrated figure.

One man's opinion.

Bedfordspurs · 11 Dec 2024

Muttley said:
Even then, that is a huge assumption. A financial institution serving a loan to a club like THFC is looking at every variable under the sun. It could be argued that whether we made £120m profit or a £30m loss in that year may not have made one iota of difference to the interest rate they offered us.

All I'm saying above is that our multi-year phasing went awry in the model. I think that is one of the reasons why Poch cut a frustrated figure.

One man's opinion.

I’m gonna say that it’s one area that Levy know better than the average fan
I know when I’ve done some property development and borrowed some money the liquidity and cash aspects were huge for the rates we got

Muttley · 11 Dec 2024

glasgowspur said:
We never had a team worth half a billion.
Maybe we valued them at that but nobody else did.
Only walker and Harry went for considerable fees, nobody came in for any of the rest of them, and certainly not for fees that were going to get the squad to half a billion £s.
City, utd and real Madrid have all paid the fees we wanted for our players, so we would sell, but nobody wanted them.

It was much closer than you think. We got £50m for a RB in 2017. We would have easily got Bale money for 3 or 4 of ours in that same year, if not much more for Kane. Then you had the Dele brand at the time, and I remember reading articles about his huge valuations.

You have to also remember that football went through that crazy period at the time. It was Neymar, Dembele and Mbappe time. Even Lukaku went from Everton to Utd for £75m. The market only normalised back about 2 years later.

Check this article from Nov-2017 - https://www.insideworldfootball.com...-squads-europe-neymar-kane-top-player-values/

The squad was valued at over a billion euros in that article

Where you are of course right is that you still have to get concrete offers.

Muttley · 11 Dec 2024

thfcsteff said:
And you talk about 'revisionist' my friend hahahaha.
Can I ask, do you remember Poch saying it would take several months before Ndombele found his flow, that he was a player who would not hit his full potential for a year? Do you remember that we actually only got GLC on deadline day, and it was on an inital loan? Oh we got close to Dybala but couldn't sort out the 'image rights' (FFS). And then, three months later, we sacked the manager? Do you genuoinely believe that three months would be enough for these panacea signings to 'fix his head'? Sorry, that is ALL on Levy. HE decided to try and make up with Poch in the summer after that tense silence, HE decided that he would not want the ire of some of the fan base roaring at him for sacking a CL finalist, and it is pretty clear that HE made subsequent decisions which were ludicrous given his eventual actions.

(as ever in the spirit of debate ...I still find this an incredibly devisive topic LOL)

There is one other very important element to this story.

Ndombele had come out of the summer he joined with a hamstring injury that became a groin injury. He was playing through pain, if not missing games by being in the treatment room. He never had 90 mins in him because of that injury. He wasn't 100% match fit once in that entire season. How Jose believed he could cover the huge chasm between our midfield and forward line on his own was baffling. Such poor management.

thfcsteff · 12 Dec 2024

Muttley said:
There is one other very important element to this story.

Ndombele had come out of the summer he joined with a hamstring injury that became a groin injury. He was playing through pain, if not missing games by being in the treatment room. He never had 90 mins in him because of that injury. He wasn't 100% match fit once in that entire season. How Jose believed he could cover the huge chasm between our midfield and forward line on his own was baffling. Such poor management.

I remember seeing him early that season a couple of times, notably in the 2-2 at Emirates Marketing Project where I thought he showed great promise. I suspect you and I are related when it comes to our views on this era!!!!

braineclipse · 12 Dec 2024

Muttley said:
Should we perhaps acknowledge that most of the great defensive midfield shields normally had a partner in crime. Makelele was heralded as one of the best, yet had the amazing Lampard working harder than anyone on that pitch. Lamps made it easy for Makelele to sit in Jose's system, even though Ballack definitely didn't. Lamps made Ballack work as well. I remember Lampard making a lung bursting run for England to get in the box after Gerrard had made a trademark run down the right channel. England lost the ball and Gerrard did his usual standing there with his hands on his hips with the crowd applauding him for a great effort. Lampard in the mean time had to follow his forward sprint by an even harder defensive sprint to get back again. Supporters notice these things. TV watchers don't always see them.

In my mind, what is happening at Spurs is that there are no centre midfield partnerships forming. There is no double pivot operating in tandem in an Ange system with one pressing, one holding. There's just a bunch of free spirits doing their own thing in midfield, supposedly supplemented by 2 full-backs who are supposed to take up midfield positions.

If I was ranked the best number 6 in the world, I'm not sure I'd want to play for Ange. I'd eventually end up outside the top 10 and probably in the treatment room more than I care for.

I think we're in agreement. Wanyama/Dier had Dembele. Makelele had Essien in there as well didn't he?

To some extent we have that with Sarr who works incredibly hard.

For me though we lack even more on the ball in those areas. And I think most top examples (excluding some Mourinho teams and probably some others) will also have real playmaking ability in there.

Wanyama/Dier with Dembele didn't, but they had two fantastic ball playing CBs behind them.

Personally I think the lack of ball playing ability and deep playmaking is a bigger issue than the purely defensive side of things.

thfcsteff · 12 Dec 2024

braineclipse said:
I think we're in agreement. Wanyama/Dier had Dembele. Makelele had Essien in there as well didn't he?

To some extent we have that with Sarr who works incredibly hard.

For me though we lack even more on the ball in those areas. And I think most top examples (excluding some Mourinho teams and probably some others) will also have real playmaking ability in there.

Wanyama/Dier with Dembele didn't, but they had two fantastic ball playing CBs behind them.

Personally I think the lack of ball playing ability and deep playmaking is a bigger issue than the purely defensive side of things.

It's an enormous issue, and has been since Biss showed last Xmas that he could not be trusted to develop into his potential. I wanted a signing in the summer to reflect this.

glasgowspur · 12 Dec 2024

Bishop said:
It was a mixture, Levy was notoriously known for having high fees in mind for even squad players. We held on to those players for too long and it got stale. Sissoko should have been out of the door 1, maybe maximum 2 seasons after we got him and someone else in to try the role. We needed to buy and sell more proactively and precisely, a bit of wheeling dealing if you like.

It's the approach we are now reportedly taking and I'm hopeful, we follow it through and pounce when the moment arrises again. That parr, i can't say is going to happen, but I guess we will see.

Muttley said:
It was much closer than you think. We got £50m for a RB in 2017. We would have easily got Bale money for 3 or 4 of ours in that same year, if not much more for Kane. Then you had the Dele brand at the time, and I remember reading articles about his huge valuations.

You have to also remember that football went through that crazy period at the time. It was Neymar, Dembele and Mbappe time. Even Lukaku went from Everton to Utd for £75m. The market only normalised back about 2 years later.

Check this article from Nov-2017 - https://www.insideworldfootball.com...-squads-europe-neymar-kane-top-player-values/

The squad was valued at over a billion euros in that article

Where you are of course right is that you still have to get concrete offers.

Players are no different from any other item, they're only worth what someone was will to pay.
We have a history of selling players, nobody wanted them.
What was Eriksen valued at, what did he end up going for £10m? And clubs weren't exactly lining up to get him.
Lloris, WC winning captain, no serious offers, Toby and Jan far superior to maguire who went for £80m and if we'd had that kind of offer for one of them I suggest we would have snapped their hand off.
But nobody wanted them.

Just looked at the table in the article, suarez is Barcelona most valuable player.
Not Messi, not xavi, not iniesta, but suarez.
Did look at anything else.

thfcsteff · 12 Dec 2024

glasgowspur said:
Players are no different from any other item, they're only worth what someone was will to pay.
We have a history of selling players, nobody wanted them.
What was Eriksen valued at, what did he end up going for £10m? And clubs weren't exactly lining up to get him.
Lloris, WC winning captain, no serious offers, Toby and Jan far superior to maguire who went for £80m and if we'd had that kind of offer for one of them I suggest we would have snapped their hand off.
But nobody wanted them.

Levy refused Poch's request to sell Eriksen once it was known he would not sign a new contract. In fact, as I remember it, Levy priced him out of a move. Poch also wanted Toby out in 2018. He came back from injury in shape that Poch considered 'out of' and Toby was upset about it. Again, no sale was sanctioned.

billyiddo · 12 Dec 2024

thfcsteff said:
Levy refused Poch's request to sell Eriksen once it was known he would not sign a new contract. In fact, as I remember it, Levy priced him out of a move. Poch also wanted Toby out in 2018. He came back from injury in shape that Poch considered 'out of' and Toby was upset about it. Again, no sale was sanctioned.

That's not an argument against the point GS was making though, he's saying when those players were at their peak they were not attracting the level interest/offer that matches up with what our supporters thought/think they were worth. Poch wanting to sell them later doesn't change that.

Personally I disagree with him, the players weren't getting bid on for the same reasons clubs weren't bidding for Klopps Liverpool players, that's because they were playing for a team that was settled, pulling in the same direction and were on the verge of big things - the players didn't want to leave essentially.

glasgowspur · 12 Dec 2024

thfcsteff said:
Levy refused Poch's request to sell Eriksen once it was known he would not sign a new contract. In fact, as I remember it, Levy priced him out of a move. Poch also wanted Toby out in 2018. He came back from injury in shape that Poch considered 'out of' and Toby was upset about it. Again, no sale was sanctioned.

Priced him out a move, or our valuation is too high because other clubs didn't see the value.
As a unit that team was worth more, as individuals they really weren't, and nobody buys a unit.
Jan and Toby couldn't even get to play for Belgium in their natural positions, they were FBs.

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